Hurdles Remain for Closer US-South Korea Tech, Trade Cooperation, Experts Say
The U.S. and South Korea may have to build more trust if they want to effectively coordinate on technology competition issues, experts said during a June 2 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Although the May meeting between President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was a good first step, speakers said the two sides will likely face challenges implementing some of their goals, including an improved trade and technology partnership.
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During their meeting, the two leaders vowed to “broaden cooperation” around critical and emerging technologies, specifically mentioning artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other high-tech areas that the Commerce Department previously identified for potential export controls. The U.S. and South Korea specifically agreed to work closer together on both export restrictions and foreign investment screening to “prevent the use of advanced technologies” from undermining “national and economic security.”
The meeting produced a “wonderful joint statement,” said Sue Mi Terry, a Korean expert with the Wilson Center, but the two sides may face challenges implementing their technology goals. “Where do we go from rhetoric to practice?” she said. “I really think the main challenge will continue to be China, and it's more than just the economic coercion piece.” She said China accounts for more than 30% of South Korean exports and South Korea imports more than 30% of its semiconductors from China.
“I just get this sense that there was this [positive] rhetoric, but it's going to be a challenge,” said Terry, a former National Security Council official. “We have to find a way to deal with the reality of South Korea’s relationship with China.”
The two sides may need to build more trust before they can further cooperate on technology restrictions, including sanctions and export controls, said Andrew Grotto, a national and economic security expert at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Although the two sides are part of the “unprecedented allied unity” around export controls to restrict shipments of sensitive technologies to Russia, it could be a challenge to extend that cooperation “more broadly to deal with critical and emerging technologies,” said Grotto, a former senior adviser for technology policy at the Commerce Department.
“It is going to be all too easy and tempting for interlocutors on both sides of the Pacific to interpret supply chain resiliency initiatives and industrial policies as really sort of core trade policy in disguise,” Grotto said. “That won't work unless the allies trust that the motives are truly about national security and not about advancing some parochial domestic economic interest.”
Part of what makes it challenging, Grotto said, is that many of these trade-style negotiations historically occurred “strictly within trade channels.” Now, discussions around semiconductor policies may include “a whole other set of institutional actors who may have a different orientation towards the costs and benefits of a policy."
Grotto added there is a “clear need” for the U.S. and South Korea -- along with Japan, Taiwan and the EU -- to “figure out how to achieve the resiliency goals without undermining the innovation ecosystem around semiconductors.”
Although it will be challenging, Grotto said the U.S.-South Korea relationship seems to be off to a good start. “That Biden and Yoon seem to have some real chemistry is going to help a lot with the trust factor,” he said. “Now the challenge is going to be: How do you push that down into the respective bureaucracies?”
Terry said both sides will benefit from cooperation in semiconductors, noting South Korean companies produce 70% of the world's memory chips. “We know there are opportunities here,” she said. “We know the U.S. and South Korea have complementary capabilities.”
South Korea and other Asian countries also likely appreciated U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s May speech on the administration’s China policy, said Victor Cha, CSIS’s Korea chair. In it, Blinken said the U.S. plans to build on and improve its export controls and investment screening measures to keep China from acquiring sensitive technologies (see 2205260028).
“I think that speech probably went over very well with allies in Asia,” said Cha, a former NSC official. “It talked about the broad scope of the challenges and the competitive nature of the U.S.-China relationship” but it also mentioned “potential areas of collaboration and cooperation.”
“So to the extent that represents a compromise position with regard to China policy in the U.S. government,” Cha said, “that is something that I think will resonate with allies and partners in the region.”